IRANIANS FLEE TO TURKEY AND DREAM OF U.S.

By ALAN COWELL, Special to the New York Times

Published: May 26, 1987

ISTANBUL, Turkey, May 21—
On most days, outside American diplomatic missions here and elsewhere in Turkey, small knots of people gather -sometimes whole lines of them -clutching documents, some false, and harboring dreams, some in vain.

A Western official sought briefly for a comparison and then came up with ''Casablanca,'' the film featuring Humphrey Bogart and depicting the Moroccan city filled with fugitives from Nazis - seeking, as one character puts it, the flight to Lisbon and ''a Clipper to America.''

Those who gather here by the hundreds of thousands are also seeking refuge.

But they are Iranians fleeing the Islamic revolution - draft-dodgers, business executives, members of religious minorities including Jews and Bahais, and still others fleeing because of past associations with the Shah.

Their plight presents a problem without apparent solution. Increasingly, Western officials acknowledge, Western countries, including the United States are reluctant to accept them.

Turkey has reportedly begun forcing back those Iranians found arriving by horse and truck along the smuggler trails of the mountainous eastern border. But they continue to flee and a business has flourished here.

Here, in the teeming, tumbledown streets of Aksaray district, as in Signor Ferrari's Blue Parrot Club in ''Casablanca,'' a fugitive may purchase many things: a passport with a replaced photograph (estimated cost: $800); a whole new passport (estimated cost $2,000); forged documents attesting to the existence of a family -fictitious - in the United States, or bogus stamps and seals to lend an official appearance to a false credential.

Sometimes those who prey on Iranians take the money and disappear.

A fugitive from Iran, a Western specialist said, might buy passage on a vessel not scrutinized by Turkish port officials, or pay for the temporary distraction of an airport immigration official. It is even whispered that an Iranian man might arrange for an American woman to become his wife and thus allow entry to the United States.

Turkey has become a reluctant host to the fugitives because it borders Iran and because it does not require Iranians to hold entry visas.

''Turkey used to be a point of transit for the Iranians,'' a Western said. ''Now it's getting to be a cul-de-sac.'' Another specialist estimated the number of Iranians arriving in Turkey each month at between 5,000 and 10,000.

But no one seems to know for sure how many Iranians overall have crammed this already bulging city. The minimum estimate by Westerners is 400,000, the maximum 1.5 million. The Turkish Interior Minister, Yildirim Akbulut, put it at 15,000 to 16,000 -a figure regarded as fiction to protect Turkey's awkward position between conflicting pressures. Iran Fears Gathering of Foes

Iran, a Western diplomat said, does not want Turkey to harbor its foes and malcontents, fearing the growth of an exiled political and military opposition.

But, a relief official said, Western nations - while leery of Iranians themselves - do not want Turkey to close its doors. Additionally, the Turks, suspicious over Iranian efforts to sponsor Islamic fundamentalism in this secular state, are said to anguish over who some of the Iranians are.

''It would be no problem at all for Iranians to infiltrate all kinds of people in the stream of fugitives, including fundamentalist agitators,'' a Western specialist said.

Last year, people thought by diplomats to be Iranian hit men gunned down in Istanbul's streets several people said to be collaborators of the Shah.

But many Iranians in Turkey seem to boast of a less prominent status. Outside the United States Embassy in Ankara the other day, for instance, two sets of strangers met up to discuss a common goal: visas to America.

One man, slightly stubbled and accompanied by a woman he said was his married daughter, said he was seeking a visa for her to join a husband already in America. Then, he said, he would return to Iran, where an unmarried daughter was in college, and seek a visa to the United States for her and himself when she had graduated. 'Now There's Nothing'

Speaking to a reporter but unwilling to be identified, he seemed to show a kind of nostalgia. ''Once we could buy everything,'' he said. ''Now there's nothing. All the country's money goes for bombs for the war. All the young men are at the front. All the professional people have gone.''

He gestured toward a young woman. ''Here, you can see her hair,'' he said. ''She wears jeans. At home, she is persecuted if she does not cover herself and wear traditional dress.''

The number of Iranians seeking entry to the United States at American missions in Turkey seems to have peaked in 1985, when around 29,000 applied for visas. The figure fell in 1986 to 18,000, according to the U.S. Consulate in Ankara, and is expected to drop a bit this year. On average, 75 percent of the applications are rejected.

Yet, like flood water pressing on a flawed dam, many Iranians seem to show a persistence and ingenuity in seeking ways to the West. Until last year, for instance, the East German airline Interflug did not require visas for Iranians boarding flights to East Berlin from Ankara. So Iranians would board the planes, and, once in East Berlin, they would cross to West Berlin.

That loophole has been closed now, and other West European countries, which used to permit fugitives to remain on their soil while their applications for residence were processed, no longer do so, a Western diplomat said. Refugee Proof Required

''They would come with all kinds of stories - how they had paid $2,000 to be spirited in trucks through Bulgaria to places in Western Europe where the borders are porous - like Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - or the French-Belgian border,'' the diplomat said. ''On the way they would destroy their passports and claim asylum. Now, if there's no prima facie evidence that they are genuine refugees, they are sent back.''

The number of Iranians formally settled as recognized refugees in the West may be higher this year, the official said, because Western countries including Canada and Sweden have shown interest in ''taking the cream.''

In the first three months of this year, about 570 Iranians acquired formal refugee status.

In the movie ''Casablanca,'' there were also unwanted people, locked in intrigue, clawed by those selling promises and passages. And, as the movie's narrator puts it in the opening scenes, the destiny of many is simply ''to wait, and wait, and wait.''